


Ghosts of Heaven's Past

by Toroto



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Angel Castiel, Angel Dean Winchester, Character Death, M/M, Mentor Castiel, Sailor Dean, long fic, victorian au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 08:39:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3722386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toroto/pseuds/Toroto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death is never quite the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts of Heaven's Past

If you have ever been in a rough storm, you would still be overwhelmed by how rough it was that night on the sea. You would have no idea of how the wind beat the sails and the roar of the ocean sounded like death’s own beck and call. It was the siren song, tinged in the harsh horrifying truth that none of the sailors could escape from. You would not have been in a storm like that where the riggings and masts were moving as if they were leaves in a hurricane and the waters that billowed and bulldozed the wood panels of the ship were soaring as tall as any man had ever seen.

Wind and waves are a continual presence in the world. They will never leave and in the cycle of existence, they will never cease to be. Wind that crashed against the pillars of wood that normally held the cream tarp sails. Waves that pushed the boat like a toy from side to side, much as if a pair of children were fighting over who might get to play with it first. Wind that screeched like a hawk over the ears of all who would listen and tore the water from the ocean towards you like a missile. Waves that soared high and fell hard against the deck, sending men to the wooden ground or even risked sliding them completely over the sideboards of the 17th-century ship.

Boats were never meant to last against the sort of pressure that occurred in that storm. It was unexpected that the wooden plaything of the gods hadn’t capsized already. It was 1629 and to be frank, the wooden ship was not very well inclined to last long in weather such as this. They were simply not meant to survive when the entire ocean was just waiting to swallow them whole. It was nothing more than a matter of time.  
No one could have seen this storm coming but all knew how it was going to end.

There wasn’t a single man on board who wanted to die that night. Not one who didn’t wish that they could see the light of the golden sun tomorrow and feel cool rustle of sea mist against their skin rather than the harsh splatter of pelted rain they felt now. No one wanted to die... but honestly, who really ever did?

It had been nice up until that point, the seas calm and blue, the sky a teal color with only a small shielding of clouds above. The sun, for the first two weeks of their voyage, had been out to guide their way and allow a clear course to the lands of England herself. To the Mother country, it was but expected that eventually ships would need to cross the ocean to deliver goods. Merchant ships and cargo deliveries were nearly all that these boats in the main pod of the Massachusetts boating industry were used for. Items that were needed by both the colonies and England to trade, sell, haggle, and barter over were packed up in crates and pushed to the bottom of the ships before the boats were only given one wave goodbye as a farewell.

It was a normal delivery, really. Nothing you would risk your life over. Salt, tea, metal, cloth, food, spices, glue, letters, the average things that would be shipped over on a day to day basis. Other than ships, there really was no other way to get the things across but no one was willing to risk their necks for some seasonings and the letters that old Grandma Delilah wanted to send to her friend Betty in London.

Sailing, however, wasn’t really considered dangerous. Not by what most people’s standards. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it was dangerous on hundreds of counts from the weather, to accidents on board, to pirates and malnutrition, sickness, and several other factors... but it wasn’t as if they were fighting a war. If bullets and muskets were not involved, it was rarely actually thought of as ‘dangerous’ even if people did die from time to time. It wasn’t something that the sailors, who had done this more than once, would think about and wonder if they should be risking their necks. Shipping paid decent wages if you found the right boat and, despite the risks, if done right, you could make an honest life for yourself with just a few cross sea trips.

Shipping, in fact, was one of the most eager jobs to grab at if you needed some fast cash. As long as you knew your way around a boat, knew your riggings from your cabins quarters and your square knot from your rolling hitch knot, not to be confused with the bowline knot, then you were at least good enough to test out. Every good sailor had a first voyage and if you didn’t test a new man out every once and awhile, well hell, you wouldn’t have anyone left in the next ten or so years. So while the greenhorn position was sought after pretty well, to be trained and made into a right and official sailor, it wasn’t as rare as you might think. Every boat needed a cabin boy, after all.

It’s sad to think of the cabin boy on that ship right then when the ocean was as dark as the sky above. Whoever it might have been would have been young, barely more than a pup who had perhaps decided that he would want to make his way in the world. Maybe he was earning money for his sick ma’ at home or just what lay behind the shores he grew up on. Travel the oceans and catch the wind in his hair. Maybe the kid didn’t mind the fact that he was cleaning up after twenty sailors. Maybe the kid took pleasure in hearing the older rougher men tell stories after dinner in their gruff voices as they recounted made up tales of things that even he knew had never happened. Old wives tales and fisherman’s folklore, it would have been all the Same to a young boy’s ears.  
Whoever it had been to happen to get saddled to a doomed ship, may God rest his soul.

Not just him, however, but all the crew. Twenty-two men including the captain and the cabin boy were aboard that ship with no memorable name as it set sail out of port two weeks ago last night. Twenty-two men were still ever present on it throughout the weeks of sailing, moving across the sea at a brisk but jolly pace as it cut the waves around its planks, making occasional white foam spray up when a gust of wind tilted the sails sharply one direction or another. Twenty-two men who each had lives, hopes, dreams, thoughts and feelings that were individually unique. Who knows if they had families at home who were relying on the money that this cargo ships trip would bring to them. Who knows if they had a son or a daughter, brother, sister, or even a wife that was waiting for them back at home and praying, if they happened to be religious as most were, that God guide the ship to England safely. No one bothered to mark down the names of the men anywhere for records so it was obvious no one ‘important’ was on the crew that set sail but each man was important in it of himself. He was important to at least someone.

What might have happened to them all if they hadn’t agreed to come on that ship. If they hadn’t nodded and shaken hands with the captain before climbing on board with what little things they would bring on the journey. Would they be at home with the person that they cared for now, laughing and smiling at them as if nothing has happened. What if they had made one decision differently that wouldn’t have put them on this path that was swiftly leading them to the only possible fate left for the twenty-two bodies on board.

Dead weight at the bottom of the sea, they were soon to become, and hardly anyone remembers dead weight in the history books.

The call of panic was the first thing that the sleeping half of the crew had noted when the storm struck. The men on board took turns on deck, manning the masts and making sure everything was running smoothly. Not everyone was needed and while some worked, others slept or ate to regain their energy for when their turn came along. How most of the crew had managed to sleep through the beginnings of a storm like that is uncertain. Perhaps they were the soundest that sleepers come... but either way, the yelling command into the barracks for “All hands on deck, men!” was enough to wake them from their beds and send them rushing topside as sleepy but distressed expressions crossed each face.

They were no use, the extra hands. No one could fight off the wind and the sea such as it was that day. No one, not even the most proficient, could combat the way the water now began to turn the ship on its side, men spilling overboard and into the dark captive clutches of the waves below. No one could stop the way that the ship began to take on water and more bodies were flung into the sea. It was an inevitable end and sadly, no one could be there to recount the tale. No one would make it out that night alive.

There was no one who would hear of the cabin boy that tried to hold onto the edge of the deck or of the sailor who went out of his way to help the brown haired boy. Would they even be sad to know that both fell into the waves at another overbearing toss of seawater against them? Perhaps yes... perhaps no. Maybe they would simply take it as another story and mourn them as if they were characters on a page. No one would truly ever know that there was a captain that still fought valiantly to try to move the lifeboats out onto the ocean only for them to be overtaken with water in a matter of seconds. No one would ever know of the ginger who tried to hold up the body of an unconscious sailor for as long as he could before tiredly closing his eyes to the world as the last wave pounded over both of their heads, sending them to the bottom of the sea.

There would be no heroic recounting of these stories, no one to later mention of how brave some of the men had been nor how much cowardice others might have shown during those moments before the crew was lost. The ship which held no memorable name in the record books worth keeping around. They were just names on a list of the dead now and a unimportant ship that had been lost at sea. Letters would be mailed to families if they had any or could find any but people died all the time. What is another ship to a world this large? What is a few more lives gone?

Twenty-two men died that day. This is the story of only one. He didn’t go into any record books and he wasn’t marked down as important even if he happened to be more unique than anyone ever would realize in this life. He wasn’t a hero, no savior to mankind in the world of the living. He was just a man, faulty, weak, and oh so very human. He was a sailor, a brother, a fighter and survivor, but he wasn’t a savior to anyone. He was simply a man... the only difference is that this one man made something out of his life not before death but after.

\------------

Dean was pretty sure he was destined to be doomed for life, completely and utterly bound for hell. That’s just a fact, nothing more. If the man had considered himself religious at all, he would have said he wasn’t a good person and he wasn’t going to make it up to that shiny cherub-filled world in the sky. In fact, he was more inclined to just believe that they all rotted in the ground. It went against what the church was teaching, that everyone could be saved but he had seen enough death and lost enough hope that he never quite believed in Heaven or in Hell. Better to be inclined to have nothing after life than to always be on the brink of which one you will end up in.

No, up until the moment when darkness flashed to white, he had guessed that his bones would end up in some cheap cemetery and his soul would just go kaput, along with everything else that actually mattered in his life. Dean had never been one inclined for optimism.

His own date with destiny had set out just like most of the others. This wasn’t his first trip cross sea. Hardly. It was close to his tenth now and the man was, in nearly every possible meaning of the word, experienced. He knew this ship front to back, inside and out, sideways and under. He could tell you which planks creaked when stepped on when walking to the mess hall and he could tell you where to put your cot if you wanted the best air circulation when you were sleeping.

Dean knew this one ship nearly as much as he knew the back of his hand. Probably better. It was his baby, after all, even if it wasn’t technically his. Hell, he didn’t even captain it. Even if he didn’t own the boat, everyone knew to report to first hand Dean Winchester if they wanted to get the best information they could on anything regarding this ship. He may not have been captain but he sure as hell could have been what with the reputation that Dean held over that boat.

None of this was supposedly new to him, no greenhorn by any means of the term. The man was the one to do the wake up calls and to fix the broken planks that were coming loose or rotten when they got to shore. He was the one to climb up to the crow’s nest with a telescope between his teeth or navigate his way around the sails to tie off a loose knot that would have come undone in a sudden gust of wind. That was Dean’s job, and he happily did it to keep the boat in order. He wasn’t afraid of going a little bit out of the way (if you happen to call trips across the sea ‘out of the way’) to earn some cash. Not if it was doing what he loved.

He never thought he would die on the sea. Just like he didn’t think much of Heaven, the possibility of the waves being his grave hadn’t really ever been contemplated as an option. Nothing more than rough storms had ever happened to Dean when they were out on the water and those had been easy compared to the one that had hit them around midnight that night. Those storms had been sweet and gentle comparatively but even with the vast difference between the two, no one had ever died in a storm when Dean was on board. He had made quite distinctly sure of that.

So why, if no one had ever died before, would the man think that he himself would die?

Dean was one of the first to go barreling over into the water, waves swallowing his form every few seconds as it bobbed in the darkened waves. He, however, was one of the last to let exhaustion take over. One of the last to stop fighting the current and to stop coughing up water from his lungs after each time he was dragged down. That was just his personality though. He had things to live for, he wasn’t going to let these son-of-a-bitch waves kill him off without a little bit of a struggle.

Eventually, however, even the best of soldiers give up fighting. You can’t stand a force like that forever... and when that last wave pushed up under, gulping the blond haired sailor down into the turbulent ocean, Dean faded away. He couldn’t fight it any more than he could make the sea calm under his command or cause the sun to turn green by will alone. It just wasn’t his to dictate. Bubbles streamed from his mouth as a symbol of that last breath gone and then he sank like every other man who had been on that ship, down to the depths of the ocean. 

Each man has a time to go. Most, if they think that far in advance, pray to go surrounded by family and quietly in their sleep. No one wants an end like this. No one wants to be a forgotten name. But as each body, one by one, began to sink farther into the waves, they all met the same horrifying end. They each died the same way: Alone. For death does not welcome people in pairs. The cold grip on one’s heart, the hand that pulls you away, it takes only one at a time. The scale of life is a balance. You may come into the world surrounded by family, but you will always leave alone.


End file.
